Norton's racing re-birth in Britain could be on more than one front as ThundersportGB are considering a Norton 500 class for the 2009 season.

The appearance of the Norton NRV588 at the Mallory Park round of the Thundersport championship caused an incredible level of public interest and has prompted the organisers to look at the benefits of running something entirely British.

Richard Day, co-founder of Thundersport admitted today that he has had an approach from an interested party in running a pre-1964 Norton series within their championship.

"We currently have just two class slots available in our 2009 championship and we have four proposals from interested parties to join us. The Norton idea is one that we are considering, as it fits in with our aim of having a varied race programme where each race class is obviously distinct from everything else," said Day.

"This may seem a little strange being that this is an extremely modern looking series with some groundbreaking classes and TV coverage at every event. A grid of classic racers might seem a bit of an odd choice for such a forward looking organisation.

"Yes, it might seem an odd choice but I love all things British and there is a genuine public interest in this historic marque. At the Festival of 1000 bikes, the Nortons are always the centre of attention and they do fit in with the idea of having an eclectic mix of machinery and classes at our meetings.

"We have riders as young as 12 years old in our Aprilia Superteen series and to have an interesting counter-balance to that is something we are seriously considering. Some of our younger riders will never have seen anything like this and our TV package would introduce a whole new audience to these beautiful old machines.

"In a world where everyone seems to play 'follow my leader' we have shown that we're not afraid of doing things differently. At the start of 2008 Stuart Garner and Brian Crighton from the Norton Racing project came to us and asked if we would write a set of rules that enabled them to race the Rotary NRV588 in order to help develop it.

"We created the Thundersport GP1 class that enabled the Norton to compete directly against the large capacity Japanese and Italian machinery and it acquitted itself very well."